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men. Not a hint of movement. Not a sign of them.
    I continued to gaze as well as my eyesight would allow, but it was as though every last one had just vanished into air. I remembered the screams I had heard, and I freely admit that I dreaded the worst. So too, it was clear, did Private Haggard. My three companions had all joined me by now and, despite my best efforts to chivvy them along, they observed the camp and its emptiness. ‘Probably gone for an early-morning stroll, sir,’ said the Sergeant-Major imperturbably; then he gestured at Haggard. ‘Best keep an eye on him, sir,’ he whispered. And he told me what I had not before realised, that Haggard had been a part of the expedition which had lost Lady Westcote – he had been in the area before and seen some pretty queer things. He was a brave enough chap, but rattled, for your average soldier will cheerfully take on a Zulu impi by himself, but give him a whiff of voodoo and he’ll show you a stomach dyed a deepish shade of yellow. By this time we were crossing level ground; I began to wish we were still mountaineering, for Haggard, I thought, needed his mind kept busy.
    The plateau we were crossing was about a mile deep. We made our way carefully, and soon joined a path that wound up through the rocks and had traces of recent footprints in the dust. We took to the heights, shadowing the path, and it wasn’t long before we were approaching the base of another mountain front, rising sheer and seemingly even more insurmountable than the cliff we had just climbed. Eliot paused to scan the rocks ahead. ‘There,’ he said suddenly, pointing. ‘That’s where the path continues up the diff.’ I looked and saw a gaudily painted shrine carved out from the rock. I inched forward, searching for a way that wouldn’t take us along the path, for I was on my guard despite the seeming calm, but as I lifted my head I felt Eliot’s hand restraining me. ‘Just wait,’ he whispered. ‘The sufferers from the disease are sensitive to light.’ He pointed again, this time to the east. I looked. The mountain peaks were touched with pink. Eliot was right; the sunrise couldn’t be far away.
    ‘Sir,’ whispered Haggard, ‘what are we waiting for?’
    I motioned him to be quiet, but Haggard shook his head. ‘It was like this when they took the Westcotes,’ he muttered, ‘that poor lady and her lovely daughter -snatched away, them and their guard, just like now, gone into the night, just gone into the air.’ He rose to his feet and looked about him wildly. ‘And now they’re hunting us!’
    Desperately I pulled him back down, and as I did so I heard Eliot breathe in and hiss at us to lie still. I stared at the path before us; there was movement coming from the undergrowth beyond, and I saw a group of men walk out. They were dressed in Russian uniforms, but I could not see their faces, for they stood with their backs to us. Then one of the men turned and seemed to sniff the air. He looked towards the rock where we all lay hidden, and I heard Private Haggard mutter and groan. I too, staring at him, felt a sickness in my heart, for I was looking at the man I had shot in the skull the night before! I could recognise his wound, just a mess of blood and bone, and how the blighter was still alive I couldn’t tell. Yet he was! His eyes were gleaming and shone very pale.
    ‘No!’ Haggard suddenly screamed. ‘No, not me, not me!’ He aimed his rifle, and with a single shot blew away a second Russian’s face. He broke from the Sergeant-Major’s attempt to restrain him and started to scramble over the rocks towards the shrine.
    Eliot swore. ‘Quick!’ he shouted. ‘We must run as well.’
    ‘Run? From an enemy? Never!’ I cried.
    ‘But they are infected!’ Eliot screamed. ‘Just look!’
    He gestured, and as I stared I saw, to my horror, that the Russian felled by Haggard was slowly rising to his feet. His jaw had been shot away and hung from the skull by a single thread